When Stacy Bourdukofsky’s abusive ex-husband touched down on the small island where they live to stand trial for strangling his girlfriend and whacking a man in the head with a bat, she was waiting to board the outbound flight on the same jet.

She’d gone to extreme measures to escape him in the past, and she wasn’t about to let him unnerve her this time around.

“My first marriage was a nightmare. It was constant drinking, and it was always beatings. I would end up with severe black eyes to where I couldn’t see out of one eye,” said Bourdukofsky, 37, a no-nonsense mom who hunts reindeer and coaches basketball. “I had no support. I had nobody to talk to back then.”

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She had dealt with Nekita Melovidov, 47, for the better part of her adult life. She’d gotten as far away from him as one can get living on St Paul, an isolated volcanic speck of land surrounded by the Bering Sea, almost halfway between Russia and Alaska. Survival meant abandoning her old life, and, for a time, her children.

“I had enough. I packed up my stuff, walked straight out the door and never looked back,” said Bourdukofsky. She quit drinking, remarried, and started a new career.

Shelter housing and counselors helped her slowly piece her life back together. She now works as a victim advocate – a calm head in a moment of need, a human link to a better life.

“At first for a victim, it’s just actually really hard to talk about [being abused],” Bourdukofsky said. “Telling somebody that you believe them and listening to their story could make a huge difference.”

The community of Saint Paul island, population 500, halfway between Russia and Alaska. Photograph: Ash Adams for the Guardian

Generations of sustained traumas – slavery, dislocation, oppression – still hurt the Aleut Community of St Paul Island, a federally recognized Indian tribe. This manifests as child abuse, domestic violence, sexual assault and addiction. To fight this, the tribe took matters into its own hands.

The key to social change required one crucial component: financial self-determination.

St Paul now has domestic violence shelters, social workers and culturally relevant programs for healing. It has the buildings, people and authority to meaningfully and quickly assist individuals in crisis. It’s doing things differently: cross-deputizing city police to enforce tribal law; making rape kits available on-island to make the forensic examinations process as speedy as possible, and hopefully, lead to more prosecutions.

Both are firsts in the state of Alaska.

It has also given community members more choices. Local counselors are available. But so are off-island providers who routinely travel to St Paul. A person can get help from whomever they feel most comfortable with. Therapy can be office time behind a closed door, or it might take the form of a craft project or a walk on the beach.

“All these people are trying to figure out how to help rural Alaska. I think the way to help them is to give them their money,” said Patrick Baker, the tribe’s executive director, during an interview at the tribe’s Anchorage office. “Give them the funds that they can start building with.”

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About 500 people, mostly Alaska Natives, live on St Paul Island. The tribe estimates as many as 90% of the relationships on the island expose individuals to verbal or physical abuse.

National data shows about two out of three American Indian and Alaska Native women experience domestic violence, sexual and physical assaults in their lifetime.

Aleuts first settled the island as slaves to Russian fur traders. When Russia sold Alaska to the US, the US government maintained the for-profit commercial fur trade and took the Aleut laborers on as wards. During the second world war, villagers were evacuated off the island for two years, transferred to abandoned canneries and mines rife with hunger and illness.

Then, in the 1980s, word spread: the US government would leave St Paul.

“There was a lot of optimism that we can be the rulers of our own destiny,” explained Amos Philemonoff, 48, a tall, empathetic man who spends time as a lay reader in St Peter and Paul Russian Orthodox church.

Surrounded by plentiful fishing grounds and home to some of the world’s largest breeding grounds for fur seals and seabirds, the island had promise. Still, Philemonoff detected a widespread sense of gloom. Previously a government-run town, people who’d suffered generations of trauma were left to fend for themselves. “All of a sudden we didn’t have an economy any more,” Philemonoff said.

They’d survived centuries of hardship, but putting an end to the pain that tribal members inflicted on each other was an altogether different type of survival, one that would require patience, political assertiveness and innovation.

Before Philemonoff found his political voice, and before he married his current wife, he lived a fisherman’s life. He worked hard pulling black cod, halibut and crab from the Bering Sea. Off the boats, he played hard, drank too much, and got too loud – familiar territory for a man who’d grown up watching families across the island struggle with alcoholism and domestic violence.

A drunk driving charge landed Philemonoff in treatment, which he received off-island and paid for through the support of a handful of local entities. While there, he realized alcoholism and substance abuse hid old wounds. Convinced that people can transform their lives, and that services should be easier to access, Philemonoff used his growing influence to advocate for more of everything.

More money. More programs. More access. More success.

“I truly believe anybody, and everybody can turn their life around, and I never give up hope on anybody. I just strive to keep helping the best I can,” Philemonoff said, describing himself as the epitome of second chances.

Father John Kudrin, a Russian Orthodox priest, is housed thanks to the tribe’s financial self-determination. Photograph: Ash Adams for the Guardian

St Paul managed to eventually get those things – buildings, services, social workers – because years ago it strategized to wrest control of its money away from regional entities.

The Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975 gave St Paul the authority it needed to self-manage federal funds designated for housing, education, healthcare, child welfare, courts, transportation and the environment.

Where before St Paul received about one out of every four dollars meant for it, 70 to 80% of the money now stays on the island, said Baker.

In 1995 the tribe had five employees and ran a bar. Now, it’s bringing in over $10m a year, employs 68 people and pays out nearly $3m in wages. The tribe’s most recent bold move – transferring its healthcare from one regional non-profit to another – freed up $1.5m, money it’s pouring directly into programs to improve quality of life on the island.

Financial self-determination has allowed the tribe to provide two domestic violence shelters, build three duplexes, purchase 18 homes and renovate 81 living spaces for local low-income families. It’s spiffed up a youth center, a community arts center, trained carpenters, paid to house the community’s spiritual leader, Father John Kudrin, a Russian Orthodox priest and offers microloans.

It’s implemented a wellness court, sobriety programs and expanded the services available for victims of domestic violence and sexual abuse. In 2017, the tribe acquired the local grocery store, which should bring in an additional $3.5m in annual revenue.

“I think my grandfather would be extremely proud,” Philemonoff said.

•••

With its financial self-determination solidified, the tribe is focusing on individual self-determination.

To that end, police officers from the City of St Paul, a different governing body than the tribal government, have recently been cross-deputized to enforce tribal law. Final agreements are also being made to allow volunteer community members to collect court-admissable evidence in sexual assault cases. The new program could be a game changer for prosecutions.

Zachary Lamblez, the chief of police and director of public safety. Lamblez, a former US marine, has been a tribal police officer for 16 years. Photograph: Ash Adams for the Guardian

The tribal sexual assault forensic examiners, known as “Safestars” – volunteers trained by the Southwest Center for Law and Policy – are among only six such programs nationwide. With portable rape kits, victims can receive exams in their home, a clinic or another place where they feel comfortable and safe. Previously, if a survivor wanted evidence collected, she or he could face excruciatingly long waits.

Waiting for a flight out. Waiting days to shower. Waiting to get the exam over with. Waiting sometimes so long that there was no longer any point in going through with it, as forensic evidence collected more than three to four days after an assault is considered unusable.

The programs are the latest prongs in a revamping of western practices of wellness to better meet the community’s needs.

In July 2017, Charlie Melovidov, a spry, 55-year-old with long hair pulled neatly into a ponytail and a graying mustache and beard, became St Paul’s first-ever graduate of the Txin Kanguux Wellness Court Program, an 18-month sobriety program that offers transitional housing, counseling and employment assistance.

“I am tired of drinking. I am homeless. I need a place to live. I can’t live outside no more. My body can’t take it,” Melovidov recalls telling the tribe when he asked for help in late 2015.

Graduation day brought tears to his eyes and an end to the cycle of childhood abuse, homelessness and jobs and relationships lost to his alcoholism. Now, from the bright, one-bedroom apartment in his apartment at the senior center, he can see the grasses, the buildings, the water – all so close and yet a world away.

“This is all I wanted throughout my life is to have my own place,” Melovidov said. “I love it here. Every time I look out that window and see the wind and hear the rain, the feel of the rain comes right back. I tell myself, ‘Look what I got now. This is mine. I don’t have to be out there.’”

Zoya Stepetin, 58, is also working to turn her life around. Born to an alcoholic mother, Stepetin started drinking as a teenager and as an adult became a volatile alcoholic. At 4ft 7in tall she is lively and formidable, keeps her nails polished and has straightforward gruffness and sass. She’s moved into the community’s transitional housing, which provides physical safety and self-sufficiency.

Zoya Stepetin, 58, at the new transitional housing facility in St Paul. Stepetin, who is currently living sober, struggles with alcoholism and is a survivor of domestic violence. Photograph: Ash Adams for the Guardian

“When I was drinking I was an easy target,” Stepetin said over a cup of black coffee at the dining room table inside her ground-level apartment, fiddling with the rings she wears from friends, her mother, and one from the church inscribed with “let it be”.

“All my guy friends treat me like a lady now. Before they were always talking bad to me or talking dirty to me, but now they won’t do that any more,” Stepetin said. “I’m not scared any more. I’m stronger than I thought I was.”

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Serafima Merculief, 61, is also stronger. More than 20 years ago, she survived what she calls “the beating of her life” from her husband. That same night, he fired a gun inside their home. Her husband told police it was a botched suicide attempt. Merculief believes the bullet was meant for her. Things got so volatile Merculief was given a VHF radio to keep by her bedside in case of emergency. For many years to come, she stayed.

“It was easier to know where he was at,” said Merculief, who has since divorced, worked as a victim advocate and is now taking courses to get an associate degree.

She hopes to become a behavioral health aide, someone who can help people with substance problems, grief and depression.

•••

The tribe predicts the social problems it’s hoping to get rid of will take generations to overcome, just as they took generations to create. Because the island’s wellness programs are so new, just changing one life, one family, is enough.

The week before Christmas, colored lights brightened the outline of Bourdukofsky’s busy home. Dozens of tennis shoes and winter boots filled shelves inside the front door, a tall Christmas tree overtook the living room and homemade cookies sat on counters.

Stacy Bourdukofsky looks at photos she took of her son, Peter, during a performance at the community center. Photograph: Ash Adams for the Guardian

Walking into her home is to walk into love. The phrases “Dance like nobody’s watching. Sing like no one’s listening. Love like you’ve never been hurt,” are painted in large, curved calligraphy across the walls. “I love you with all my heart,” stretches beneath pictures of her children and tokens of their accomplishments: graduation caps, certificates of achievement, framed small footprints, school pictures.

“I express to my kids every day that whatever they do, and whatever they say to me, it is not going to be a burden to me because I’m here to protect them at all costs,” Bourdukofsky said, recalling the isolation and helplessness she felt throughout childhood and in her first marriage.

“No one ever listening to you and being judgmental towards you kind of breaks you,” she said. “I didn’t know how to stand up and speak my voice.”

Now, with her children watching and learning, she does.

Reporting for this story was partly supported by a grant from the Alaska Resilience Initiative